16 réponses à ce sujet

[Yenkaz]

I'm currently replaying DA:O as a mage and trying out some of the spell lines I never bothered with (while ignoring the Sleep tree). Amongst those I've come to realize something:

 

The Glyph line is fantastic.

 

1: Paralysis Explosion: A decent early game debuff to take out the strong enemy. Remarkable mostly because the other paralysis spell is a lvl 2. Moving on.

 

2: Glyph of Warding: A bonus of 30 defense to every character in the area! This is actually huge when fighting close quarters, even more so when your characters already have high defense, they become incredibly hard to hit!

 

3: Glyph of Repulsion: At first glance it's a lackluster spell that won't see much use.. But realize this: This game is bloody full of tight corridors, caves and other choke points. By putting this down you can easily seperate any army in two or lock in a group of enemies and throw down a Storm of the Century to kill them all.

 

4: Glyph of Neutralization: A poor man's Mana Clash... Well, not really. You're not supposed to throw it at enemy mages, you're supposed to use it for damage control if you don't manage to kill enemy mages quickly and half your party is incapacitated by magic! Also a decent backup to deal with mages that you could not reach with Mana Clash.

 

Paralysis Explosion (always put glyph of rejection down fist): At first glance it's a poor man's Mass Paralysis that requires two spells and has friendly fire and no visible area of effect. But that's ignoring three things:

 

1: You learn to aim it to hit only enemies very quickly.

2: It'll take about as long to cast as Mass Paralysis anyway - and has double the duration!

3: It can't be resisted. Any large group of high level enemies, any dragon and any boss character including the bloody final boss will be stopped for a short while. It's like a wide area Force Field except that you can still do damage!

 

Zone of Can't-Touch-This (Glyph of Warding + Glyph of Repulsion): Sometimes you're forced to fight in the open against a large group of enemies. This is where this combo shines: You can throw these glyph on top of one another and suddenly you can actually make a stand anywhere out in the open and avoid the enemy swarming your party. I loved doing this against swarms of enemies in the Deep Roads.

 

 

Anyone else have experience with a spell tree that is more powerful/useful than it looks?

[luna1124]

This is why I LOVE to play a mage/arcane warrior Thank you for this combo. I had not tried it before.

[Yenkaz]

Oh man, I didn't even think about the people playing arcane warriors - no sheathing required!

[luna1124]

I like to freeze them with cone of cold, then shatter them with weapons

I can usually get 2 or 3 before they thaw out.

[caradoc2000]

Mana Clash is way too powerful.

[dainbramage]

The walking bomb line is pretty crazy.

 

Lock down a group of enemies with some form of crowd control, cast VWB on the middle target, then nuke it down, and you're dealing potentially 450 damage in the area of effect. Not even counting the boost from spellpower.

 

But wait, there's more! WB and VWB also combine to be the best boss killer in the game. If you re-apply a DoT just after one has expired (whether on its own, or been overwritten by a fresh one), the new DoT does its damage twice every tick. Do it again, and it does triple damage (side note - this is why the corrupted spider queen kicks your ass with her poison spit). That means if you cast WB then VWB immediately after, you do 15 dps instead of 7.5. A second WB when it comes off cooldown also does 15dps. The third WB will do 20 dps. And so on and so forth. Get up to about the 7th consecutive cast and congratulations - you've just solo'd the high dragon

 

Order now, and get Frank, the handy summonable skeleton for free! (just pay one spell point shipping and handling). He can draw aggro to cluster up those enemies for the aforementioned combos, knock down a couple of enemies, or even pick locks for you.

[Just Another Gamer]

@Yenkaz, pretty helpful tips. I've played DAO (just) twice, both the times as a mage but wasn't aware of these. I tried to use the Paralysis explosion combo but had a problem many a times while using it. What used to happen was that ALL the combatants in the area , including my team members and the enemies, will get rooted to the spot for at least 10 seconds. During that period, a blue light will be flashing inside the four circles that show the party members' pictures on the top left corner of the screen. I have no idea why such behavior used to occur. You said that the glyph of repulsion should be used first in the Paralysis explosion combo. I used to use the glyph of paralysis first. Maybe that's the reason.

[DeathWalksBehindYou]

I like to freeze them with cone of cold, then shatter them with weapons

I can usually get 2 or 3 before they thaw out.

Discovering Shatter was SO much fun! If I have a horde of enemies charging at me, I usually have Morrigan blast them with a Cone of Cold, then either Wynne or my warden mage knock one of them out with a Stonefist. Tanks can go after the rest with Overpower, Mighty Blow or Critical Strike.

 

Eventually, my warden learned Cone of Cold, too. Like I said, it’s fun!

[Tremere]

Mana Clash is way too powerful.

Perhaps, but I prefer to think about how enemy spellcasters get to continuously cast spells and suddenly, the pain they feel from Mana Clash seems justified.

[Ashevajak]

Grease followed up by any fire spell.  Because combos are fun (it's also relatively easy to unlock both, and has the added bonus of slowing enemies down).

 

Also, the Arcane Warrior with sustained abilities can get pretty crazy.  Arcane Shield + Rock Armour + Miasma makes you able to stroll pretty much into the middle of any fight, even on Nightmare, and just tank things for days.  Not fun in the sense of amusing gameplay, maybe, but fun watching enemies struggle to land a blow while you just methodically tear through them.

[fkirenicus]

The Creation, Entropy and Spirit schools of magic all have powerful spells - which can be augmented by using Spell Might or combining say one negative resistance modifier followed up with a spell that drains life or mana.
That's why my mages never pick spells from the Elemental school. :-)
Also, the combination of Blood Mage and Spirit Healer ROCKS. 

[Nessaya]

The Entropy (Death hex + Death cloud!) and Glyph lines are my favourites - no news here, as the other posters have already shown.

I know AW is extremely powerful, but I don't enjoy it since it doesn't feel 'mage-y' enough for me.

[capn233]

Glyph line is probably the most consistently good line, which happens to have the best all around combo in the game within it.  Warding is pretty decent for a melee death ball, and Neutralization is pretty handy against enemy mages (put it on them to lock down, or drop it on a squadmate who has been hit by a spell).

 

I would pick the Cold line as the second best line overall.  It sets up probably the second most useful combo (Shatter) with Cone of Cold.  CoC's CC effect also works on most elite units.

 

Next I would go with the Fire line.  Good damage, even if it is resisted by some higher tier enemies.

 

After that, seems like most lines only have maybe 1 or 2 good spells, and many of those are fairly niche.

[ent1]

The mind blast line is quite good too. As far as unexpectedly powerful spells go, the warrior taunt -> force field -> laugh at AI sequence is an old standby for me.

[matcjur]

Taunt on warrior, force field it, use cone of cold on baddies, walking bomb one of them then detonante with stonefist. All that's left to do is laugh

[Hirdas]

hmm there is something with prison and force field i think, but i am not 100% sure right now as i have not played it for a while. .

[line_genrou]

Blood Mage is the strongest imo

Any AoE spell in this game is op

Waking Nightmare/Sleep/Blood Wound/Crushing Prison